“Do I have to be in pain to write? I thought so, as most of my contemporaries did…”

Musician Sting

Cheryl Arutt, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, specializing in creative artist issues, trauma recovery, and fertility. She is a forensic and media consultant, and a frequent psychological expert on CNN, HLN, truTV and Fox News.

Topics in our interview include high sensitivity, regulating disruptive feelings, destructiveness vs creativity, pain and creativity, being unconventional vs rebellion against the self, the fight-or-flight response, and other issues which can impact creative artists and other people as well.

Psychologist Cheryl Arutt writes in one of her guest articles on my main site:

“Creating art has always been a way to channel emotional intensity…If you are an artist, you are your instrument. The greater access you maintain to yourself, the richer and broader your array of creative tools.”

In the interview, Dr. Arutt refers to this quote by musician Sting (which I added to the same article): “Do I have to be in pain to write? I thought so, as most of my contemporaries did; you had to be the struggling artist, the tortured, painful, poetic wreck. I tried that for a while, and to a certain extent that was successful. I was ‘The King of Pain’ after all. I only know that people who are getting into this archetype of the tortured poet end up really torturing themselves to death.”

"Developing Multiple Talents" [by Douglas Eby]. "Part book about creativity, part compendium of useful quotations and research...this is a wildly useful and highly entertaining resource." - Stephanie S. Tolan.
See more reviews & purchase links on the Book Site.